Sometime this week my N900 stopped showing me when my skype contacts were online. I can still log into skype ok and send messages to contacts since their skype username is still stored in the address book - but they have no availability icon showing so I have no way to tell if they are online or not, also any new contacts I add from my PC do not show up on the address book on my phone.

I restored a backup with backupmenu from earlier this week and after starting up skype was working ok again. Then CSSU 4.1 downloaded and I installed it, and after rebooting skype was broken again - but 4.1 isn't the problem.

I restored the backup again, all ok. Then I rebooted the N900 again without installing any updates and skype stopped showing contacts availability again. If I go to Conversations > New IM it just says I have no contacts.

It seems like skype is not communicating with the address book for some reason. Does anyone have any idea why or what I should check? I had already done a lot of playing around with re-adding my IM accounts and deleting anything under /home/user that said skype or my skype name in it but nothing seemed to make any difference.

I just noticed that when I receive a message from someone then their availability icon is shown correctly next to the last message from them. So the places it is missing from are address book, desktop shortcuts and conversations main window. MSN contacts still work fine.

I've also started to have this problem. I can still message contacts just fine, and it will then show that they are online in the Conversations app (little green dot next to their name), and I can also receive Skype calls, however I cannot make any outgoing calls via Skype.

I'm looking for a solution, will post it if I find anything.

I have exactly same problem out of the blue and would be extreemly happy about a solution.

for me it's problem too. i'm think something changed in skype's protocol. it's not only problem, gTalk sometimes have this problem too.
and also PicasaSharingPlugin doesn't work now.
n900 is really die?

Just an idea:
I don't have such problem but maybe it should be related to IPv6.
I know similar problem with (facebook widget located to) libcurl3 (fixed - can be updated with cssu + extras-testing). I have no clue if skype or gtalk using libcurl3 ...

I forget which kernel-power added the ipv6 support.

I have a second N900 for backup and on these I did not have the problem. So I created a image with "BackupMenue" and set up on my second phone like first and after I had the problem on the second phone as well.
So I flashed the second phone but the problem stayed. So I ****ed up the second phone wich was working before ((

I delay my skype settings and started new. Now the problem is even more worse. I can now not even send messages via skype what was possible befor. Can please someone help!

Thanks for the suggestions, but it doesn't seem to be a kernel or libcurl issue. I restored the original nokia kernel and that made no difference, and I tried downgrading libcurl since I already had the latest and that did nothing either

I don't think it is a problem with the n900 talking to the skype network, since conversations still work ok and show if the user is online/away/offline no problem. It is just the address book which doesn't seem to be talking to the skype account for some reason - which is strange since I didn't install any updates at the time the problem started.

@ Hansen
I also lost all my skype contacts while I was trying to fix the problem, the only way I could get them back was to restore my contacts from a backup.